![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleMaster Post - Part 1 - Part 2
Birth: November 2011
Victoria does not take Nate's suggestion that she could be a pregnant nun for Halloween, and instead finds a pair of wings and a magic wand and declares herself to be a pregnancy fairy. Gabe buys a red suit, horns, and a tail. Victoria helps him paint his face red, and they hand out candy and meet a few of their neighbors who have kids. Victoria sends Gabe out to party while she goes to bed early and doesn't hear him come in.
After that, they settle into waiting. Victoria packs a bag that they can just grab when it's time to go to the hospital. Gabe makes dozens of empanadas and three kinds of soup he doles out into small portions and freezes so they'll have things to eat that they don't have to think about for the first couple of weeks. Gabe talks to Tyler in Spanish a lot, and Victoria shells out for Rosetta Stone software so she can learn enough to keep up. Victoria's back aches, and she spends a lot of time watching TV on the couch with Gabe's hands a constant touch massaging the aches out of her muscles.
Mom and Dad fly out the weekend before Thanksgiving with plans to stay at least until Tyler's born. Gabe agrees to help with Thanksgiving dinner as long as he doesn't have to have anything to do with the turkey, so he and Mom spend an afternoon at Whole Foods while Victoria takes a nap and Dad visits friends.
The night before Thanksgiving, Victoria has nightmares. She wakes up from one of them gasping for breath. She holds Gizmo close and tries to get her breath back. She's petting him and calming down when a wave of pain rolls through her stomach. It's not like the false labor contractions she's been having. She's pretty sure this is the real thing.
"Gabe." Her voice comes out barely loud enough to carry beyond her room. She takes in a deep breath and yells, "Gabe!"
He turns on the light when he comes in, and just that is a relief. It's a lot less scary in the dark.
"Babe, what is it?" He's still dressed, and she glances at the clock that tells her it's not even eleven. He must've still been up.
"I think I'm having contractions. The real ones." Victoria pushes herself up to sit against her headboard, and Gabe comes over to sit on the edge of the bed. He takes her hand.
"Okay," he says. "How long ago?"
Victoria shrugs. "A couple of minutes. And a few minutes before that, I think. I had a nightmare."
"You wanna get up, or you want to stay here until the next one?"
Victoria sighs heavily. "Let's walk. If it's not the real thing, that'll make them stop."
Gabe steps back so she can get out of bed, and then takes her elbow as they go out into the hall and make a couple of circuits of the apartment. They're in the kitchen when the next one hits, and Victoria grips at the counter and at Gabe.
When it's over, Gabe pulls a piece of paper off the pad on the counter and writes down the time. The numbers are a little shaky.
Gabe picks up the house phone, dials Doctor Sanders, and puts it on speaker. Victoria tells Doctor Sanders about her nightmare and the next two contractions.
"It's time to start timing them," Doctor Sanders says, "and call me back if your water breaks, if anything feels wrong, or when they've been coming every five minutes for an hour."
Victoria leans against Gabe after they hang up the phone.
"You want to call your mom?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "Not yet. This could go on for a long time." She's okay so far, and it's enough to have Gabe holding her up and walking her around the apartment. "They can sleep for a while longer."
Gabe kisses the top of her head.
They sit on the couch, walk, sit on the couch again. Gabe writes down each of her contractions, gives up when they don't get closer together, starts timing again when they do.
"Come on, Tyler, baby," Victoria mutters. "Let's do this thing."
It's hours of it before Gabe says, "They've been five minutes for the last hour," and gets up between contractions to get a phone.
Doctor Sanders talks to Victoria through a contraction, and says, "Okay, it sounds like it's time to come on in to the hospital. I'll meet you there."
Gabe calls a cab and gathers up her bag, coat, boots. "On a snowy night in November," he says. "This'll be a good story to tell someday."
Victoria leans against him through the pain of a contraction that hits in the elevator. "Every year on his birthday."
The cab's waiting for them downstairs, and Julio the night doorman says, "Good luck, Ms. Asher. Can't wait to meet the little one."
"Thanks," Victoria says, before another contraction hits and she has to wait for it to pass before she can get in the cab.
Gabe calls Mom and Dad, Amber, and his dad from the cab. Then he texts Alex, Ryland, and Nate, who are all visiting their families.
"Pete and Ashlee," Victoria reminds him, and he texts them too.
They beat Doctor Sanders to the hospital, but Victoria gets admitted anyway. A nurse takes them up to the maternity ward and gets Victoria settled into a hospital gown and then a bed.
Doctor Sanders comes in not much later, and looks Victoria over, times a couple of her contractions. "Everything's going great," she says with a smile.
Mom and Dad show up, and Mom smoothes her hair back. "Oh, honey," she says.
Victoria's eyes fill with tears, and she reaches out for Mom's hand. "I'm so glad you're here."
Amber gets there not long after Mom and Dad, and she practically squeals, "Oh my God, V, I can't believe it's finally time."
Victoria laughs and sits up enough for a hug. "Me either." Another contraction hits, and she says, "Oh, fuck."
It goes on for a long time, waves of pain, nurses and Doctor Sanders coming and going, Mom and Gabe holding her hands, Dad and Amber and, later, Diego, behind them just being there with her.
"Okay, Victoria, I need you to push now," Doctor Sanders finally says.
She does, and it's a relief and it hurts like hell and she can hear herself yelling and Gabe looks scared for the first time.
That goes on for a long time too.
"Almost there," Doctor Sanders says. "I need you to push for me again."
And Victoria's at the end of her strength, and she knows she has to be strong for Tyler, but she's not sure she can. "I can't," she says.
"Honey," Mom says, "you can do this."
Victoria squeezes her eyes shut against a rush of tears. "I can't."
"Victoria," Gabe says, and she opens her eyes to look at him. "You are Victoria fucking Asher. You're a Cobra. You can fucking do this." He's been holding her hand, but now he climbs half onto the bed with her, his arm around her shoulders pulling her against his chest. "You can do this," he says fiercely.
Victoria takes in a shaky breath and pushes and pushes and pushes, and she can feel it when it's the last one, when Tyler comes free of her body.
"Do you want someone to cut the cord?" Doctor Sanders asks.
Victoria says, "Gabe," and pushes him away from her just a bit.
"You sure?" he asks with wide eyes.
"Yes." Victoria smiles and laughs and cries, and Gabe cuts the cord, and they do whatever it is they do, and one of the nurses makes her push again for the placenta, and Doctor Sanders puts Tyler in her arms. "Oh," Victoria says. "Oh, hi, baby." She kisses his tiny forehead. "Hi. You're beautiful. I love you."
Everyone crowds around her to see him, and Amber's grinning, and Mom and Dad are too, and Diego and Gabe have their arms around each other.
"Tyler Diego Asher," Victoria says when Doctor Sanders asks for his full name for the birth certificate. She looks up, and both Gabe and Diego are staring at her, Gabe with tears at the corners of his eyes. She smiles, and he pulls out his phone.
"Picture time."
Victoria groans. "No. I probably look terrible."
"You look beautiful," he says. "I'm tweeting this."
She shifts so he can get her and Tyler in the shot.
There are a lot of other pictures too, everyone with her and Tyler, everyone getting their turn at their own picture with Tyler, more pictures of her with Tyler.
Victoria's tired enough to sleep when Tyler does, but she eventually looks at her phone. She has dozens of texts and messages offering their congratulations. She checks her Twitter and sees that Gabe tweeted the photo of her and Tyler with the caption Tyler Diego Asher. Born 9:37 am Nov 24 2011. Happy Thanksgiving. Victoria looks happy and tired; Tyler looks perfect. Victoria retweets the picture and caption, texts Alex, Ryland, Nate, and Ashlee back, and turns her phone off again.
*
"You should go home," Victoria tells Gabe late in the evening. Mom and Dad have already headed back to their hotel. "Get some sleep."
"I don't want to leave you alone," Gabe says.
Victoria reaches for his hand and squeezes it. "We'll be okay." She keeps her voice soft so she doesn't wake up Tyler sleeping his crib next to her bed. "You haven't slept at all, and someone has to bring the car seat so we can leave tomorrow. I'm just going to sleep anyway."
Gabe brushes her hair back and leans over to kiss her forehead and then her cheek. "Babe, you're fucking incredible."
After he leaves, Victoria sleeps in bursts of a few hours at a time, interrupted by Tyler's crying.
By the time morning rolls around, she feels pretty confident in her ability to breastfeed and change diapers.
Mom and Dad come in early and take turns cooing over Tyler. Victoria has him back, dozing against her chest, when Gabe comes in with the car seat and a Starbucks cup. His gaze locks onto Tyler.
"I'll trade you baby for coffee," Victoria offers.
Gabe takes one more sip and says, "Done." He puts the coffee on the table next to Victoria's bed, and she carefully shifts Tyler into his arms.
The coffee is seriously good stuff: pumpkin spice latte. Victoria watches Gabe over the rim of it as she drinks.
He holds Tyler like an expert and just looks down at him. His face is so open and so full of love.
She understands, now, what Christine meant about not believing she could love another person so much. Victoria can hardly believe the way she feels about Tyler, and she's pretty sure Gabe is feeling the same thing.
Gabe looks up and grins at her. "Holy shit," he whispers.
"I know," she whispers back.
*
They go home in the afternoon, Gabe, Victoria, and Tyler in one cab and Mom and Dad in another, and Victoria walks Tyler around on a tour of the apartment. Gabe trails behind her and repeats half of what she says in Spanish.
"You're going to be a bilingual baby, huh?" Victoria says.
"Claro que sí," Gabe says over her shoulder.
Victoria smiles and walks Tyler into the nursery. "And this is your room. We painted it just for you. This is where you're going to grow up." She sits down in the rocking chair. "We're going to spend a lot of time in here." She can see why people have rocking chairs. There's something unutterably soothing about rocking with Tyler in her arms.
"Hey," Gabe says from the door.
Victoria looks up, and Gabe's leaning against the doorjamb watching her, a soft smile on his face.
"Want me to keep your parents busy?"
She feels guilty about it - they're only here for a little while - but she doesn't want to move and she doesn't want to let go of Tyler. "Would you?"
"Yeah, babe, of course." He pulls the door most of the way closed behind him and leaves her alone with Tyler.
She rocks and sings and feeds him and changes his diaper.
Gabe comes back later, after she's turned on one of the soft lamps to counteract the darkness outside the window, and pushes the door open wide enough to poke his head in. "There's dinner," he says. "You want to come have something to eat?"
"He's asleep."
Gabe comes all the way into the room. "Want to put him down? We have the baby monitors."
She doesn't, not really, but she's hungry and she doesn't want to wake him up. She stands up and takes Tyler over to his crib.
Gabe comes over to stand with her. He puts his hand on her back. "I can bring you a plate," he offers.
"I can do this." Victoria takes a deep breath. "I'm going to have to anyway, right?" She carefully lowers Tyler down into his crib and pulls the blanket up over his shoulders.
Gabe tugs her close and kisses the top of her head. "Come on, babe. Your mom cooked for us."
Victoria picks up the baby monitor, makes sure it's turned on, and takes it with her out to the dining room where Gabe carefully takes it from her hands and puts it on the shelf behind her.
"You'll hear it," he says.
"Oh, honey," Mom says, "he'll be fine." She hugs Victoria. "I remember when I couldn't bear to be away from you, and now look where you are." She sniffles, and then smiles. "You need to eat something."
Victoria does, although she can feel her whole focus centered on the baby monitor.
"So," Mom says after Victoria settles down a little bit, "we were talking. Think you'd be up for Thanksgiving tomorrow? We still have the turkey and everything."
"Nothing huge," Gabe says. "Us and my dad, and Amber if you want. And you can duck out of it any time you want."
"Sure," Victoria agrees. "I'll call Amber after dinner."
*
Even with a large apartment, only one dog, and not very many people, Thanksgiving turns into more of a production than Victoria can handle. Gabe TiVoed the parade, and he turns it on while he and Mom cook, which makes for a lot of noise.
Victoria escapes to the nursery for a while to watch Tyler sleep. When he wakes up, she nurses and burps him, and then takes him across the hall to her room. She opens up her laptop and turns on the camera.
"Hi, everyone. I guess you know I had a baby a couple of days ago." She turns Tyler toward the camera. "This is Tyler." She smiles down at him, and then holds him close to her chest again. "We just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all of your congratulations and for all of the presents people brought us over the last couple of months. You're the best fans ever, and we're going to be seeing you soon, I promise. We're going back out on tour in a couple of months, and Tyler doesn't change that at all." Victoria ducks closer to the camera and lowers her voice. "We're also hiding. We were a little busy on Thanksgiving, so we're having Thanksgiving today. Right now, Gabe and my mom are in the kitchen arguing about sweet potatoes." She shudders. "We don't want to be in the middle of that." She smiles at the camera again. "We'll just eat whatever they decide to make." She reaches out and turns off the camera.
She watches the video through to make sure it's not a total mess, then uploads it to YouTube. She hums while she does it, and when she realizes she's humming Weezer, she laughs and scrolls through iTunes to find the album.
"You might not remember this," she says to Tyler, "but I played you this before you were born, and your Uncle Ryland and I like to sing along to it. Your Uncle Alex doesn't like that much."
The video finishes uploading, and she tweets the link, then checks her email, singing the whole time. Tyler seems to like it; he stays calm.
Amber comes to collect her later for dinner, and they all settle in around the dining room table - Victoria at one end, Gabe next to her, Diego next to him, Dad at the other end of the table, then Mom and Amber.
"We have to say what we're thankful for before we can eat," Gabe says. "I'll go first. I'm thankful for my band, my friends, and my family, and that includes Tyler."
"I'm thankful for this meal we're about to eat and to be here with at least one of my sons," Diego says.
"I'm thankful for my wife," Dad says, "and our amazing daughter and our grandson."
Mom tears up at that and says only, "Me too." She and Dad are holding hands.
"I'm thankful that I get to have Thanksgiving dinner twice," Amber says, "and that I get to do it with V and her family."
"I'm thankful for Tyler," Victoria says, "and for Gabe." She reaches out for his hand. "This would've been a million times harder without you."
Gabe brings their joined hands up and presses a kiss to her knuckles. "I was never going to leave you to do something like this alone."
*
Mom and Dad go home a few days later, and Victoria didn't notice quite how much they were helping out, because after they're gone, it seems like it takes a lot more work to take care of both herself and Tyler. And, really, it shouldn't be, because Gabe's there sharing in pretty much everything except breastfeeding, which no one was helping her with anyway.
Ryland and Alex come to visit and have their pictures taken with Tyler when they get back. Nate comes up to New York on his way back to L.A. to do the same.
Like things do, everything settles into a routine after a week or so, and then Victoria realizes they're well into December and she hasn't even thought about Christmas gifts.
"I want a Christmas tree," she says over dinner - microwaved soup in front of something mindless on TV while Tyler naps. "And stockings and the whole bit." She looks over at Gabe. "Is that going to be a problem?"
Gabe sits back and considers it. "Guess we didn't think through the interfaith household thing." He tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. "Okay. We're having a menorah too, for Hanukkah."
Victoria puts her soup down on the coffee table and scoots over to hug him.
*
They go out the next day, all three of them bundled up against the cold, and pick out a tree.
"Your first one," Victoria tells Tyler as part of her running commentary. Then she looks at Gabe. "Yours too, I guess."
"I guess." Gabe looks at the trees around them a little dubiously. "What are we looking for?"
"Something that looks good." Victoria looks around. "Maybe something like this?" She wanders toward a tree that's full, but not so full you can't fit ornaments on it. "You're going to have to wrangle it and put it up. How tall are you willing to deal with?"
Gabe hmms and wanders around a couple of trees. "Maybe like this?" He points at a tree about as tall as Victoria.
Victoria walks around the lot, looking at trees that height. "How about this one?" It's about the right height, the right fullness, and looks like a Christmas tree.
Gabe pokes at it and shrugs. "Sure."
Victoria pays for it, and Gabe curses its sap as he carries it home.
Victoria nurses Tyler and changes his diaper, and then they trek down to the basement to get the tree stand and ornaments out of storage. Gabe doesn't let Victoria lift anything.
It takes them most of the afternoon and evening to get the lights untwisted, the ornaments unpacked, and the tree decorated. Victoria makes Gabe set up the playpen so she can put Tyler down near them without Gizmo being able to get to him. It leaves her free to twist around the tree to get things where she wants them.
"Someday," she tells Tyler, "I'll tell you about all of these. And one day we'll go to Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas, and you can see all the ornaments I made when I was a kid." She stops and smiles. "And someday the ones you make will go on our tree."
"And someday," Gabe adds, "I'm going to teach you how to pack things up neatly so we don't have to spend hours untangling lights."
"It wasn't that long! Besides, now it's time to have hot chocolate and admire the tree." Victoria rocks Tyler, who seems to like the lights. "This is the best part."
Gabe rummages through the cupboards. "We don't actually have any hot chocolate."
Victoria makes a pleading face. "It's not the same without hot chocolate." She turns Tyler toward Gabe and reaches down to pet Gizmo. "The hot chocolate makes the whole experience."
"You," Gabe points at her, "are a menace. I'll be back in a few minutes."
While Gabe's gone, Victoria turns out the lights so it's just the lights of the city outside and the Christmas tree lights inside.
"I can't believe you made me go out in that," Gabe gripes when he comes back. He makes the hot chocolate and brings her a cup. He sits down next to her and tucks an arm around her, cups his hand over Tyler's feet.
Victoria leans her head on his shoulder. "This is the best part."
"It is kind of pretty," Gabe says.
Victoria elbows him in the stomach. "It's beautiful. Tyler's first Christmas tree."
*
They go out to Jersey for latkes with Gabe's dad on the first night of Hanukkah. The next morning, they get up early and take Tyler to Macy's to see Santa. They get their picture taken - Santa holding Tyler, and Gabe and Victoria each perched half on a knee - and buy what Gabe calls "the most expensive pictures we're ever going to have of Tyler."
Mom and Dad fly out again for Christmas, and Mom and Gabe go through the same kind of epic shopping they did for Thanksgiving, with a little more relaxed cooking schedule.
On Christmas Eve, when Victoria's up nursing Tyler, she takes the stocking she's been hiding in her closet and carefully hangs it up next to the ones she and Gabe put up for Tyler and Gizmo. It has Gabe's name in the same script as Tyler's, and even though she's barely left the apartment since Tyler was born and Gabe was with her most of those times, she's managed to collect a bunch of silly little things to fill his stocking with.
When she gets up with Tyler early on Christmas morning and takes him out to see the stockings and the presents under the tree - he won't remember, but she's starting a ritual here - there's a fourth stocking with her name on it hanging with Gabe's, Tyler's, and Gizmo's.
She's still standing there looking at it when Gabe joins her. He stands behind her with his hands on her shoulders and says, "Santa came for you too."
Victoria leans back against him. "Yeah."
Gabe's arms come around her and Tyler and hug them close. It's perfect.
After a moment, Gabe kisses the top of Victoria's head and asks, "So what do you Christians do now?"
Victoria elbows him, carefully because of Tyler. "Stockings," she says. "And breakfast, and then the rest of the presents later when Mom and Dad come over." She glances back at him. "And we have to sit on the floor by the tree for the stockings."
Gabe's eyes are laughing at her, but he says, "Okay," and carefully brings the stockings over to where she's settling onto the floor.
Gizmo yaps at them, so Victoria dumps things out of his stocking first, a collection of toys and a bone and packages of treats. It's more than enough to keep him occupied while Gabe and Victoria go through the other stockings.
Tyler's stocking has a rattle, a hat, some socks Victoria bought on one of their Christmas shopping trips, and a pair of socks she's never seen before. They're striped, and they make a soft noise every time they move.
"One of the baby books said they're good for infants," Gabe says when she holds them up. "They're fascinated with their feet anyway."
"They're adorable." Victoria rattles them at Tyler. "Look at these." Tyler's face scrunches up a little, but he doesn't seem to have an opinion about them. Victoria bends over to kiss his cheek. "We'll try them on later."
She pushes the pile of Tyler's things to one side to make room to unpack her stocking. She gets socks, too, a pair of halfway practical knee-highs with a subtle black-on-black pattern, and a pair of good for stage but not for home sheer purple thigh-highs. She also gets eyeliner, a pair of cheap plastic earrings she knows will look good on stage, and a small box of really expensive chocolate.
"Something you're trying to tell me?"
Gabe knocks his knee into hers. "I know being a mom isn't all you are."
"Thanks." Victoria smiles and nudges him back. "Your turn."
Gabe dives into his stocking with all the gleeful abandon of a small child. Victoria did not get him socks, but she did get him chocolate coins, a few pairs of plastic sunglasses, and a handful of small toys.
"What the hell?" he mutters at some of them.
"Here." Victoria takes one of them, a fish, from him and squeezes it to show him how the eyes pop out of its head.
"That's fucked up!" Gabe gets up and comes back with his phone. "Do that again." He grabs one of the frogs, holds it next to the fish, and snaps a picture. He sends it off, then holds up his phone so she can see his tweet: We're bugging out!
Victoria laughs, and Tyler smiles up at her. "That's right, baby." She kisses his forehead.
Gabe's stomach growls loud enough for Victoria to hear, and he rubs at it. "We going out or eating here?"
Victoria wrinkles her nose. "Here. I don't want to get dressed."
Gabe leans over and kisses her forehead. "Pancakes? Waffles? Eggs?"
"Pancakes," Victoria decides, and Gabe gets up to make them.
*
Victoria spends the whole week convincing Gabe he should go out on New Year's Eve. "I'm probably not even going to stay up until midnight, and I can stay home with Tyler," she says. "You've barely been out since I got pregnant. I'm sure you miss it."
She's on the couch with whatever early evening coverage from around the world is on TV when Gabe leaves. He's dressed in a suit with a matching fedora. Victoria wolf-whistles, and he does a catwalk turn in the middle of the living room.
"Looking sharp."
"Thanks." Gabe grins at her. "I wasn't sure I remembered how." He comes over and kisses her cheek.
Victoria reaches up and wraps her arms around his shoulders for a hug. "Happy New Year."
"You too." Gabe steps back and grins at her. "See you next year."
Victoria mostly doesn't mind when he leaves and she's alone. It's not bad, exactly, even if it's not at all how she thought she'd be spending New Year's Eve a year ago. Tyler's here, and sleeping, thank God. She misses going out, though, and she's starting to think she's at the point where if she can get Tyler to take a bottle, she could leave him with someone else and go out for an evening. She hasn't been to a club since the end of the last tour, and by then she was so heavily pregnant it wasn't that fun.
She's depressing herself thinking about it, so she turns off the TV, checks on Tyler, and goes to bed instead. Uninterrupted sleep time is a precious commodity, and she'll take what she can get, even on New Year's Eve.
Tyler wakes her up a little before three, and she stumbles across the hall from her room to his.
"Hi, baby," she says as she lifts him out of his crib. "Happy New Year." She sits in the rocking chair and pulls her pajama top up so he can nurse. This is easy and familiar now, and she closes her eyes as she rocks.
She hears the front door open and close just before Tyler decides he's done. Victoria pulls her pajama top back down and shifts him in her arms so it's more comfortable. Gabe stops at the door and leans in the doorway. He looks like a fashion spread, his hat askew, his tie loosened, his eyes hazy.
"Hi," he whispers, a little loud. Victoria figures he's drunk, but comfortably so, not wasted.
"Hi," she whispers back.
Gabe stays in the doorway, just watching her and Tyler. It doesn't take long for Tyler to fall asleep. Victoria puts him back in his crib. Gabe rolls around the doorjamb into the hallway. Victoria pulls the door mostly shut behind them.
"Happy New Year."
Gabe smiles down at her. "Happy New Year."
Victoria hides a yawn behind her hand. "Did you have fun?"
"Yeah." Gabe's still smiling at her. He cups his hands over her shoulders. "I missed you, though." He leans down and kisses her.
He's kissed her before, but mostly for show. There's no one watching them here, not even Tyler. It's just the two of them in a darkened hallway.
It's been a long time since anyone kissed Victoria. It feels so good she almost wants to cry.
When he stops, her eyes are closed and her hands are on his sides, between his shirt and his coat.
"Happy New Year," Gabe says again.
Victoria huffs out a laugh. "Happy New Year," she says, even though she's thinking, What the hell was that?
Gabe lets go of her to go to his own room. "Oh, by the way," he says just before he gets to his door, "I invited Mikey over to see Tyler."
"Okay." Victoria watches him flash a smile, and then close his door. What the hell was that? she thinks again before she forces herself to go back to bed. Tyler will be up again in a couple of hours.
*
Victoria gets up with Tyler early in the morning; Gabe sleeps in.
"How hungover are you?" she asks when he comes out of his room looking for coffee.
"Not very." Gabe sounds surprised. "There might be something to this drinking in moderation thing."
He doesn't say anything about kissing her, and neither does she. They just fall back into their normal routine, and it becomes one of those things where Victoria wonders if it ever really happened. Only sometimes, when she's up with Tyler in the middle of the night, does she think about it, what it was like to have Gabe's lips against hers, Gabe's body warm under her hands.
*
Mikey comes over a couple of days after New Year's, which is fine with Victoria. He also brings Alicia, Gerard, Lyn-Z, and Bandit with him, which she's not quite as okay with. She would have liked a little notice before having a house full of people.
Gabe throws her an apologetic look, and she shrugs back at him. There's nothing to be done about it now. She lets Gabe take Tyler and introduce him to everyone while she goes to the kitchen to get drinks.
She comes back to Mikey holding Tyler. Mikey would not be her first choice for a responsible person to hold a baby, but he's supporting Tyler's head and holding him carefully, and she supposes he had to have held Bandit when she was little.
"He's a baby all right," Mikey says, flat and monotone.
Gabe snorts. "Good to see living in Jersey hasn't ruined your powers of observation."
Mikey flashes Gabe a grin almost too quick to be seen.
Alicia links her arm around Mikey's and leans against his shoulder to look at Tyler, then looks up at Victoria. "He looks like you." She reaches out and brushes her finger against Tyler's chin. "Cute."
"Thanks." Victoria settles into one of the armchairs, and Gabe comes over to sit on the arm of it.
"Wanna see!" Bandit clambers over from her dad's lap into Alicia's and reaches her arms out toward Tyler.
Alicia loops her arm around Bandit's waist to keep her from climbing onto Tyler.
"Bandit," Lyn-Z says, "why don't you give Victoria the present we brought for Tyler?"
It's an effective distraction. Bandit climbs down from the couch and goes over to her mom. Lyn-Z gives her a bag almost as big as she is that Bandit drags over to Victoria.
"Thank you, Bandit," Victoria says.
Bandit's suddenly shy; she scurries back over to her mom. Lyn-Z picks her up and settles her onto her lap.
Victoria pulls the tissue paper out of the bag to get to the present. Presents. There's a baby-sized hoodie with bunny ears, another one that's fuzzy and has bear ears. Below the hoodies are a full Batman costume and one that she's pretty sure is supposed to be a cobra. Gabe takes each thing from her after she looks at it.
Victoria's smiling when she says, "Thank you," after she pulls the last one out of the bag.
"These are awesome." When Victoria looks up, Gabe's grinning at the collective members of the Way family. "I can't wait to put him in the cobra."
*
Victoria's too tired to make a big deal out of her birthday. She takes a seemingly never-ending series of calls wishing her a happy birthday, and she and Gabe have a quiet dinner at home.
A week later, Nate flies out to visit, and they have him, Alex and Lauren, and Ryland and Meredith over for dinner. It's part belated birthday celebration and part band reconnection.
"So," Nate asks when they're lingering at the table over wine and the last bits of cake, "are we going to talk about touring?"
"Here," Lauren says, reaching out, "why don't we take Tyler into the living room and let you all talk."
Gabe kisses Tyler's forehead and stands up to hand him over to her. Alex and Ryland scoot down the table so the five of them are at the same end. While Gabe's up, he gets a folder off of the kitchen counter. "We've been running some numbers." He passes out sheets of paper to each of them.
Victoria looks at him instead of at the piece of paper. She didn't know he was doing that.
"It'll cost us some money, but we can swing two buses." Gabe doesn't look at Victoria as he says it. "The three of you on one bus, the three of us on the other."
"Gabe," Victoria says sharply. He finally looks at her. "No. That's- You don't have to do that. You can be on the party bus. I can handle Tyler."
Gabe turns fully in his chair so his knees press against her thigh. "Babe," he says, completely serious, "I want to do this. I want to be here until you meet a guy you want to be in your life and be Tyler's dad."
The only guy Victoria wants in her life, the only guy she wants to be Tyler's dad, is Gabe. The knowledge slams into her, and it's enough of a shock that she doesn't even argue. "Okay."
Gabe grins, sudden and bright, and ducks in to kiss her cheek. "And we'll be a place of refuge for anyone who desperately needs some quiet time."
"What are you doing with Tyler for shows and soundcheck?" Ryland asks.
Gabe glances at Victoria. "We haven't talked about that yet."
Victoria's arms feel empty without Tyler. "Think we can convince security that watching Tyler is part of their job?"
Gabe smirks. "Or maybe the guys from Sawdust Werewolves. Doesn't one of them have like seven brothers and sisters?"
"I think he's the oldest, too," Alex puts in. They haven't spent a lot of time with Sawdust Werewolves yet, but they seem like good kids, if young.
"If we can do it with tour staff," Victoria says, "I'd rather not hire a nanny." There's something about the idea of a nanny that feels too much like sharing Tyler.
Gabe makes notes on a piece of paper. "I'll see what we can do." He frowns and makes another note. "And get them to do more thorough background checks on anyone who hasn't been out with us before."
Nate and Alex exchange looks across the table, and then they're laughing, and so are Ryland and Victoria, and even Gabe smiles sheepishly.
"Yeah, yeah," he says, "I'm the last person you ever expected to say that." He reaches out and squeezes Victoria's knee. "But I'm not letting anyone who might hurt him get anywhere close to Tyler."
Victoria stops laughing and has to draw in a deep breath to keep from reacting to Gabe's touch any more than that.
*
Victoria doesn't know what to do with this new knowledge, so she doesn't do anything. She shoves it down and focuses on Tyler, on pulling out her keytar and practicing, on being just the same as always. The same as always means curling up with Gabe on the couch in the evenings, waking up over coffee with Gabe in the mornings, and listening to Gabe speak Spanish to Tyler.
Gabe still sings the lullaby, "Papi's gonna buy you a mockingbird."
The first time Victoria says, "You want to go to Papi?" as she hands Tyler to Gabe, Gabe freezes in the act of reaching for him. Victoria resists the urge to explain herself and stubbornly wills herself not to blush.
Gabe takes Tyler after a moment and keeps his eyes on Victoria as he says, "Ven, mijo."
Victoria laughs, later, when she's rocking Tyler. "Maybe Amber was right, huh, baby?" Victoria sure wants her to have been. She wants this to be real, wants them to be like that. She wants Gabe.
She strokes the soft fuzz of Tyler's hair and tells herself to let it go. Gabe's never seen her like that, New Year's Eve kiss not withstanding.
*
Victoria picks a fight with Gabe two days before Valentine's Day. They're working on getting Tyler to take a bottle so they'll be a little more flexible on tour. Gabe tests it against the inside of his wrist, but it's still too hot for Tyler, and he pulls away from it and starts crying.
Victoria snatches Tyler from Gabe and cradles him close. "It's okay, baby. Mommy's got you." She keeps murmuring soothing nonsense as she takes him down the hall to his room. She settles into the rocking chair and opens her shirt. Tyler's crying cuts off as he starts to nurse.
"That's it, baby," Victoria murmurs.
Tyler falls asleep afterwards. Victoria goes out to find Gabe in the kitchen.
"Shit, babe," he says, "I thought it was fine."
"It wasn't." It's just a mistake, part of her knows that. But part of her, the part that wants Gabe to be there forever but knows he won't, isn't willing to let it go. "You hurt him."
"Fuck," Gabe says, "I know. I'm sorry."
Every bit of frustration Victoria's been feeling, about spending the last four months in the apartment with just Gabe and Tyler, about all the ways her life has changed, about everything she can't have, boils over. "No," she hisses. "No. You don't get to be sorry."
Gabe clearly wasn't expecting that. His eyes widen and his mouth opens.
"He's my son," Victoria says before he can speak. "Mine." Her voice gets louder with every word. "I don't need you doing anything with him."
And maybe Gabe is feeling some of the same frustration she is, because his face twists into a scowl. "Like hell you don't!" He shouts back at her. "You'd be crammed into a tiny apartment with no fucking idea what to do if it weren't for me."
"Fuck you! I can do this myself."
"Fine," Gabe says, every line of his body tight and stiff. "Fine. Then see how you like it." He yanks his coat off the hook and slams the front door shut behind him.
Victoria stares after him, breath heaving, for a couple of minutes before she starts to cry.
Gabe doesn't come home that night.
Tyler's fretful all evening and into the next morning.
Victoria lasts until ten-thirty. Then she bundles Tyler up, straps him into his car seat, slings the diaper bag over her shoulder, and calls for a cab. She knows Ryland and Meredith went out of town for Valentine's Day, so she gives the driver Alex and Lauren's address, betting on Gabe staying in the city and not going out to Jersey.
She figures she's right when Alex opens the door in his bathrobe with a serious look on his face and dark circles under his eyes.
"Are you going to yell at him again?"
Victoria swallows past the lump in her throat. "No."
Alex opens the door wide enough for her to come in. "He's in the kitchen. Hungover as all fuck."
Victoria sets Tyler's car seat down on the floor and takes him out of it. This is going to be easier with Tyler in her arms.
Gabe looks hungover as all fuck. He's smiled every other time he's looked at Tyler, but not this time. He has dark circles under his eyes, and he looks older than Victoria's ever seen him look. They stare at each other for what seems like a long time, Victoria in the doorway and Gabe at the table with a cup of coffee clasped between his hands.
"Come home," Victoria finally says.
Gabe shakes his head. "Victoria-"
Victoria wants to cry again. "No," she says, talking over him. "No, Gabe, please." She comes into the room and stands next to Gabe so Tyler's right at his eye level. "Please. I do need you. We need you."
Gabe puts his hand on her arm, and that's good, right? That he's touching her?
"Victoria, you can't-" He shakes his head again. "I love Tyler. Yesterday- It broke my heart to hurt him, and then you-"
Victoria blinks back tears. "I know," she whispers. "I'm so- God, Gabe, I'm so sorry."
Gabe leans forward and rests his forehead against her arm where it cradles Tyler.
Victoria puts her other hand on the back of Gabe's head, curving around the shape of his skull. "Please, come home."
Gabe nods against her arm. "Okay," he says. "Okay."
Victoria curls over enough to kiss the top of his head, then carefully shifts Tyler from her arms to Gabe's.
"Ai, mijo," he murmurs as he brings Tyler in toward his chest. He smiles at Tyler, and Tyler smiles and gurgles up at him.
Victoria's hands shake, and she grabs at one of the other chairs so she can sit down.
*
They're careful with each other after that, both of them a little on edge and working hard at it. There are only a couple of weeks until tour, and Victoria leaves Tyler at home with Gabe while she goes to the gym almost every day, both as a practice in leaving him with someone else and as a way to show Gabe how much she trusts him with Tyler.
She's still a little bigger than she was before she got pregnant - and her breasts are definitely bigger - which means she needs a whole new tour wardrobe. Diego comes into the city on a Friday and stays with Tyler while Gabe and Victoria go shopping and get lunch.
Victoria finds it hard to concentrate on clothes. The fourth time she checks her phone to make sure Diego hasn't called, Gabe closes his hand over hers.
"They're going to be fine."
Victoria makes a face at him. "I know. That doesn't mean I like it."
Gabe hugs her close. She looks at their reflections in the mirror and decides to buy the dress she has on. It makes her breasts look amazing, and it looks good next to Gabe.
She buys a new wardrobe in a little under three hours, which is pretty much a record.
"Even I couldn't buy that much in that short a time," Gabe says.
"It's because I shop the same places all the time," Victoria tells him. "They know me, and they know what I like." She looks him up and down. "And my look is a little easier than the layers that go into your hobosexual thing."
Gabe leers back at her. "Aw, baby, you know you want this."
Victoria's breath hitches, because she does, and she laughs to cover it up. "You're buying lunch."
Part 4
Birth: November 2011
Victoria does not take Nate's suggestion that she could be a pregnant nun for Halloween, and instead finds a pair of wings and a magic wand and declares herself to be a pregnancy fairy. Gabe buys a red suit, horns, and a tail. Victoria helps him paint his face red, and they hand out candy and meet a few of their neighbors who have kids. Victoria sends Gabe out to party while she goes to bed early and doesn't hear him come in.
After that, they settle into waiting. Victoria packs a bag that they can just grab when it's time to go to the hospital. Gabe makes dozens of empanadas and three kinds of soup he doles out into small portions and freezes so they'll have things to eat that they don't have to think about for the first couple of weeks. Gabe talks to Tyler in Spanish a lot, and Victoria shells out for Rosetta Stone software so she can learn enough to keep up. Victoria's back aches, and she spends a lot of time watching TV on the couch with Gabe's hands a constant touch massaging the aches out of her muscles.
Mom and Dad fly out the weekend before Thanksgiving with plans to stay at least until Tyler's born. Gabe agrees to help with Thanksgiving dinner as long as he doesn't have to have anything to do with the turkey, so he and Mom spend an afternoon at Whole Foods while Victoria takes a nap and Dad visits friends.
The night before Thanksgiving, Victoria has nightmares. She wakes up from one of them gasping for breath. She holds Gizmo close and tries to get her breath back. She's petting him and calming down when a wave of pain rolls through her stomach. It's not like the false labor contractions she's been having. She's pretty sure this is the real thing.
"Gabe." Her voice comes out barely loud enough to carry beyond her room. She takes in a deep breath and yells, "Gabe!"
He turns on the light when he comes in, and just that is a relief. It's a lot less scary in the dark.
"Babe, what is it?" He's still dressed, and she glances at the clock that tells her it's not even eleven. He must've still been up.
"I think I'm having contractions. The real ones." Victoria pushes herself up to sit against her headboard, and Gabe comes over to sit on the edge of the bed. He takes her hand.
"Okay," he says. "How long ago?"
Victoria shrugs. "A couple of minutes. And a few minutes before that, I think. I had a nightmare."
"You wanna get up, or you want to stay here until the next one?"
Victoria sighs heavily. "Let's walk. If it's not the real thing, that'll make them stop."
Gabe steps back so she can get out of bed, and then takes her elbow as they go out into the hall and make a couple of circuits of the apartment. They're in the kitchen when the next one hits, and Victoria grips at the counter and at Gabe.
When it's over, Gabe pulls a piece of paper off the pad on the counter and writes down the time. The numbers are a little shaky.
Gabe picks up the house phone, dials Doctor Sanders, and puts it on speaker. Victoria tells Doctor Sanders about her nightmare and the next two contractions.
"It's time to start timing them," Doctor Sanders says, "and call me back if your water breaks, if anything feels wrong, or when they've been coming every five minutes for an hour."
Victoria leans against Gabe after they hang up the phone.
"You want to call your mom?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "Not yet. This could go on for a long time." She's okay so far, and it's enough to have Gabe holding her up and walking her around the apartment. "They can sleep for a while longer."
Gabe kisses the top of her head.
They sit on the couch, walk, sit on the couch again. Gabe writes down each of her contractions, gives up when they don't get closer together, starts timing again when they do.
"Come on, Tyler, baby," Victoria mutters. "Let's do this thing."
It's hours of it before Gabe says, "They've been five minutes for the last hour," and gets up between contractions to get a phone.
Doctor Sanders talks to Victoria through a contraction, and says, "Okay, it sounds like it's time to come on in to the hospital. I'll meet you there."
Gabe calls a cab and gathers up her bag, coat, boots. "On a snowy night in November," he says. "This'll be a good story to tell someday."
Victoria leans against him through the pain of a contraction that hits in the elevator. "Every year on his birthday."
The cab's waiting for them downstairs, and Julio the night doorman says, "Good luck, Ms. Asher. Can't wait to meet the little one."
"Thanks," Victoria says, before another contraction hits and she has to wait for it to pass before she can get in the cab.
Gabe calls Mom and Dad, Amber, and his dad from the cab. Then he texts Alex, Ryland, and Nate, who are all visiting their families.
"Pete and Ashlee," Victoria reminds him, and he texts them too.
They beat Doctor Sanders to the hospital, but Victoria gets admitted anyway. A nurse takes them up to the maternity ward and gets Victoria settled into a hospital gown and then a bed.
Doctor Sanders comes in not much later, and looks Victoria over, times a couple of her contractions. "Everything's going great," she says with a smile.
Mom and Dad show up, and Mom smoothes her hair back. "Oh, honey," she says.
Victoria's eyes fill with tears, and she reaches out for Mom's hand. "I'm so glad you're here."
Amber gets there not long after Mom and Dad, and she practically squeals, "Oh my God, V, I can't believe it's finally time."
Victoria laughs and sits up enough for a hug. "Me either." Another contraction hits, and she says, "Oh, fuck."
It goes on for a long time, waves of pain, nurses and Doctor Sanders coming and going, Mom and Gabe holding her hands, Dad and Amber and, later, Diego, behind them just being there with her.
"Okay, Victoria, I need you to push now," Doctor Sanders finally says.
She does, and it's a relief and it hurts like hell and she can hear herself yelling and Gabe looks scared for the first time.
That goes on for a long time too.
"Almost there," Doctor Sanders says. "I need you to push for me again."
And Victoria's at the end of her strength, and she knows she has to be strong for Tyler, but she's not sure she can. "I can't," she says.
"Honey," Mom says, "you can do this."
Victoria squeezes her eyes shut against a rush of tears. "I can't."
"Victoria," Gabe says, and she opens her eyes to look at him. "You are Victoria fucking Asher. You're a Cobra. You can fucking do this." He's been holding her hand, but now he climbs half onto the bed with her, his arm around her shoulders pulling her against his chest. "You can do this," he says fiercely.
Victoria takes in a shaky breath and pushes and pushes and pushes, and she can feel it when it's the last one, when Tyler comes free of her body.
"Do you want someone to cut the cord?" Doctor Sanders asks.
Victoria says, "Gabe," and pushes him away from her just a bit.
"You sure?" he asks with wide eyes.
"Yes." Victoria smiles and laughs and cries, and Gabe cuts the cord, and they do whatever it is they do, and one of the nurses makes her push again for the placenta, and Doctor Sanders puts Tyler in her arms. "Oh," Victoria says. "Oh, hi, baby." She kisses his tiny forehead. "Hi. You're beautiful. I love you."
Everyone crowds around her to see him, and Amber's grinning, and Mom and Dad are too, and Diego and Gabe have their arms around each other.
"Tyler Diego Asher," Victoria says when Doctor Sanders asks for his full name for the birth certificate. She looks up, and both Gabe and Diego are staring at her, Gabe with tears at the corners of his eyes. She smiles, and he pulls out his phone.
"Picture time."
Victoria groans. "No. I probably look terrible."
"You look beautiful," he says. "I'm tweeting this."
She shifts so he can get her and Tyler in the shot.
There are a lot of other pictures too, everyone with her and Tyler, everyone getting their turn at their own picture with Tyler, more pictures of her with Tyler.
Victoria's tired enough to sleep when Tyler does, but she eventually looks at her phone. She has dozens of texts and messages offering their congratulations. She checks her Twitter and sees that Gabe tweeted the photo of her and Tyler with the caption Tyler Diego Asher. Born 9:37 am Nov 24 2011. Happy Thanksgiving. Victoria looks happy and tired; Tyler looks perfect. Victoria retweets the picture and caption, texts Alex, Ryland, Nate, and Ashlee back, and turns her phone off again.
*
"You should go home," Victoria tells Gabe late in the evening. Mom and Dad have already headed back to their hotel. "Get some sleep."
"I don't want to leave you alone," Gabe says.
Victoria reaches for his hand and squeezes it. "We'll be okay." She keeps her voice soft so she doesn't wake up Tyler sleeping his crib next to her bed. "You haven't slept at all, and someone has to bring the car seat so we can leave tomorrow. I'm just going to sleep anyway."
Gabe brushes her hair back and leans over to kiss her forehead and then her cheek. "Babe, you're fucking incredible."
After he leaves, Victoria sleeps in bursts of a few hours at a time, interrupted by Tyler's crying.
By the time morning rolls around, she feels pretty confident in her ability to breastfeed and change diapers.
Mom and Dad come in early and take turns cooing over Tyler. Victoria has him back, dozing against her chest, when Gabe comes in with the car seat and a Starbucks cup. His gaze locks onto Tyler.
"I'll trade you baby for coffee," Victoria offers.
Gabe takes one more sip and says, "Done." He puts the coffee on the table next to Victoria's bed, and she carefully shifts Tyler into his arms.
The coffee is seriously good stuff: pumpkin spice latte. Victoria watches Gabe over the rim of it as she drinks.
He holds Tyler like an expert and just looks down at him. His face is so open and so full of love.
She understands, now, what Christine meant about not believing she could love another person so much. Victoria can hardly believe the way she feels about Tyler, and she's pretty sure Gabe is feeling the same thing.
Gabe looks up and grins at her. "Holy shit," he whispers.
"I know," she whispers back.
*
They go home in the afternoon, Gabe, Victoria, and Tyler in one cab and Mom and Dad in another, and Victoria walks Tyler around on a tour of the apartment. Gabe trails behind her and repeats half of what she says in Spanish.
"You're going to be a bilingual baby, huh?" Victoria says.
"Claro que sí," Gabe says over her shoulder.
Victoria smiles and walks Tyler into the nursery. "And this is your room. We painted it just for you. This is where you're going to grow up." She sits down in the rocking chair. "We're going to spend a lot of time in here." She can see why people have rocking chairs. There's something unutterably soothing about rocking with Tyler in her arms.
"Hey," Gabe says from the door.
Victoria looks up, and Gabe's leaning against the doorjamb watching her, a soft smile on his face.
"Want me to keep your parents busy?"
She feels guilty about it - they're only here for a little while - but she doesn't want to move and she doesn't want to let go of Tyler. "Would you?"
"Yeah, babe, of course." He pulls the door most of the way closed behind him and leaves her alone with Tyler.
She rocks and sings and feeds him and changes his diaper.
Gabe comes back later, after she's turned on one of the soft lamps to counteract the darkness outside the window, and pushes the door open wide enough to poke his head in. "There's dinner," he says. "You want to come have something to eat?"
"He's asleep."
Gabe comes all the way into the room. "Want to put him down? We have the baby monitors."
She doesn't, not really, but she's hungry and she doesn't want to wake him up. She stands up and takes Tyler over to his crib.
Gabe comes over to stand with her. He puts his hand on her back. "I can bring you a plate," he offers.
"I can do this." Victoria takes a deep breath. "I'm going to have to anyway, right?" She carefully lowers Tyler down into his crib and pulls the blanket up over his shoulders.
Gabe tugs her close and kisses the top of her head. "Come on, babe. Your mom cooked for us."
Victoria picks up the baby monitor, makes sure it's turned on, and takes it with her out to the dining room where Gabe carefully takes it from her hands and puts it on the shelf behind her.
"You'll hear it," he says.
"Oh, honey," Mom says, "he'll be fine." She hugs Victoria. "I remember when I couldn't bear to be away from you, and now look where you are." She sniffles, and then smiles. "You need to eat something."
Victoria does, although she can feel her whole focus centered on the baby monitor.
"So," Mom says after Victoria settles down a little bit, "we were talking. Think you'd be up for Thanksgiving tomorrow? We still have the turkey and everything."
"Nothing huge," Gabe says. "Us and my dad, and Amber if you want. And you can duck out of it any time you want."
"Sure," Victoria agrees. "I'll call Amber after dinner."
*
Even with a large apartment, only one dog, and not very many people, Thanksgiving turns into more of a production than Victoria can handle. Gabe TiVoed the parade, and he turns it on while he and Mom cook, which makes for a lot of noise.
Victoria escapes to the nursery for a while to watch Tyler sleep. When he wakes up, she nurses and burps him, and then takes him across the hall to her room. She opens up her laptop and turns on the camera.
"Hi, everyone. I guess you know I had a baby a couple of days ago." She turns Tyler toward the camera. "This is Tyler." She smiles down at him, and then holds him close to her chest again. "We just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all of your congratulations and for all of the presents people brought us over the last couple of months. You're the best fans ever, and we're going to be seeing you soon, I promise. We're going back out on tour in a couple of months, and Tyler doesn't change that at all." Victoria ducks closer to the camera and lowers her voice. "We're also hiding. We were a little busy on Thanksgiving, so we're having Thanksgiving today. Right now, Gabe and my mom are in the kitchen arguing about sweet potatoes." She shudders. "We don't want to be in the middle of that." She smiles at the camera again. "We'll just eat whatever they decide to make." She reaches out and turns off the camera.
She watches the video through to make sure it's not a total mess, then uploads it to YouTube. She hums while she does it, and when she realizes she's humming Weezer, she laughs and scrolls through iTunes to find the album.
"You might not remember this," she says to Tyler, "but I played you this before you were born, and your Uncle Ryland and I like to sing along to it. Your Uncle Alex doesn't like that much."
The video finishes uploading, and she tweets the link, then checks her email, singing the whole time. Tyler seems to like it; he stays calm.
Amber comes to collect her later for dinner, and they all settle in around the dining room table - Victoria at one end, Gabe next to her, Diego next to him, Dad at the other end of the table, then Mom and Amber.
"We have to say what we're thankful for before we can eat," Gabe says. "I'll go first. I'm thankful for my band, my friends, and my family, and that includes Tyler."
"I'm thankful for this meal we're about to eat and to be here with at least one of my sons," Diego says.
"I'm thankful for my wife," Dad says, "and our amazing daughter and our grandson."
Mom tears up at that and says only, "Me too." She and Dad are holding hands.
"I'm thankful that I get to have Thanksgiving dinner twice," Amber says, "and that I get to do it with V and her family."
"I'm thankful for Tyler," Victoria says, "and for Gabe." She reaches out for his hand. "This would've been a million times harder without you."
Gabe brings their joined hands up and presses a kiss to her knuckles. "I was never going to leave you to do something like this alone."
*
Mom and Dad go home a few days later, and Victoria didn't notice quite how much they were helping out, because after they're gone, it seems like it takes a lot more work to take care of both herself and Tyler. And, really, it shouldn't be, because Gabe's there sharing in pretty much everything except breastfeeding, which no one was helping her with anyway.
Ryland and Alex come to visit and have their pictures taken with Tyler when they get back. Nate comes up to New York on his way back to L.A. to do the same.
Like things do, everything settles into a routine after a week or so, and then Victoria realizes they're well into December and she hasn't even thought about Christmas gifts.
"I want a Christmas tree," she says over dinner - microwaved soup in front of something mindless on TV while Tyler naps. "And stockings and the whole bit." She looks over at Gabe. "Is that going to be a problem?"
Gabe sits back and considers it. "Guess we didn't think through the interfaith household thing." He tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. "Okay. We're having a menorah too, for Hanukkah."
Victoria puts her soup down on the coffee table and scoots over to hug him.
*
They go out the next day, all three of them bundled up against the cold, and pick out a tree.
"Your first one," Victoria tells Tyler as part of her running commentary. Then she looks at Gabe. "Yours too, I guess."
"I guess." Gabe looks at the trees around them a little dubiously. "What are we looking for?"
"Something that looks good." Victoria looks around. "Maybe something like this?" She wanders toward a tree that's full, but not so full you can't fit ornaments on it. "You're going to have to wrangle it and put it up. How tall are you willing to deal with?"
Gabe hmms and wanders around a couple of trees. "Maybe like this?" He points at a tree about as tall as Victoria.
Victoria walks around the lot, looking at trees that height. "How about this one?" It's about the right height, the right fullness, and looks like a Christmas tree.
Gabe pokes at it and shrugs. "Sure."
Victoria pays for it, and Gabe curses its sap as he carries it home.
Victoria nurses Tyler and changes his diaper, and then they trek down to the basement to get the tree stand and ornaments out of storage. Gabe doesn't let Victoria lift anything.
It takes them most of the afternoon and evening to get the lights untwisted, the ornaments unpacked, and the tree decorated. Victoria makes Gabe set up the playpen so she can put Tyler down near them without Gizmo being able to get to him. It leaves her free to twist around the tree to get things where she wants them.
"Someday," she tells Tyler, "I'll tell you about all of these. And one day we'll go to Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas, and you can see all the ornaments I made when I was a kid." She stops and smiles. "And someday the ones you make will go on our tree."
"And someday," Gabe adds, "I'm going to teach you how to pack things up neatly so we don't have to spend hours untangling lights."
"It wasn't that long! Besides, now it's time to have hot chocolate and admire the tree." Victoria rocks Tyler, who seems to like the lights. "This is the best part."
Gabe rummages through the cupboards. "We don't actually have any hot chocolate."
Victoria makes a pleading face. "It's not the same without hot chocolate." She turns Tyler toward Gabe and reaches down to pet Gizmo. "The hot chocolate makes the whole experience."
"You," Gabe points at her, "are a menace. I'll be back in a few minutes."
While Gabe's gone, Victoria turns out the lights so it's just the lights of the city outside and the Christmas tree lights inside.
"I can't believe you made me go out in that," Gabe gripes when he comes back. He makes the hot chocolate and brings her a cup. He sits down next to her and tucks an arm around her, cups his hand over Tyler's feet.
Victoria leans her head on his shoulder. "This is the best part."
"It is kind of pretty," Gabe says.
Victoria elbows him in the stomach. "It's beautiful. Tyler's first Christmas tree."
*
They go out to Jersey for latkes with Gabe's dad on the first night of Hanukkah. The next morning, they get up early and take Tyler to Macy's to see Santa. They get their picture taken - Santa holding Tyler, and Gabe and Victoria each perched half on a knee - and buy what Gabe calls "the most expensive pictures we're ever going to have of Tyler."
Mom and Dad fly out again for Christmas, and Mom and Gabe go through the same kind of epic shopping they did for Thanksgiving, with a little more relaxed cooking schedule.
On Christmas Eve, when Victoria's up nursing Tyler, she takes the stocking she's been hiding in her closet and carefully hangs it up next to the ones she and Gabe put up for Tyler and Gizmo. It has Gabe's name in the same script as Tyler's, and even though she's barely left the apartment since Tyler was born and Gabe was with her most of those times, she's managed to collect a bunch of silly little things to fill his stocking with.
When she gets up with Tyler early on Christmas morning and takes him out to see the stockings and the presents under the tree - he won't remember, but she's starting a ritual here - there's a fourth stocking with her name on it hanging with Gabe's, Tyler's, and Gizmo's.
She's still standing there looking at it when Gabe joins her. He stands behind her with his hands on her shoulders and says, "Santa came for you too."
Victoria leans back against him. "Yeah."
Gabe's arms come around her and Tyler and hug them close. It's perfect.
After a moment, Gabe kisses the top of Victoria's head and asks, "So what do you Christians do now?"
Victoria elbows him, carefully because of Tyler. "Stockings," she says. "And breakfast, and then the rest of the presents later when Mom and Dad come over." She glances back at him. "And we have to sit on the floor by the tree for the stockings."
Gabe's eyes are laughing at her, but he says, "Okay," and carefully brings the stockings over to where she's settling onto the floor.
Gizmo yaps at them, so Victoria dumps things out of his stocking first, a collection of toys and a bone and packages of treats. It's more than enough to keep him occupied while Gabe and Victoria go through the other stockings.
Tyler's stocking has a rattle, a hat, some socks Victoria bought on one of their Christmas shopping trips, and a pair of socks she's never seen before. They're striped, and they make a soft noise every time they move.
"One of the baby books said they're good for infants," Gabe says when she holds them up. "They're fascinated with their feet anyway."
"They're adorable." Victoria rattles them at Tyler. "Look at these." Tyler's face scrunches up a little, but he doesn't seem to have an opinion about them. Victoria bends over to kiss his cheek. "We'll try them on later."
She pushes the pile of Tyler's things to one side to make room to unpack her stocking. She gets socks, too, a pair of halfway practical knee-highs with a subtle black-on-black pattern, and a pair of good for stage but not for home sheer purple thigh-highs. She also gets eyeliner, a pair of cheap plastic earrings she knows will look good on stage, and a small box of really expensive chocolate.
"Something you're trying to tell me?"
Gabe knocks his knee into hers. "I know being a mom isn't all you are."
"Thanks." Victoria smiles and nudges him back. "Your turn."
Gabe dives into his stocking with all the gleeful abandon of a small child. Victoria did not get him socks, but she did get him chocolate coins, a few pairs of plastic sunglasses, and a handful of small toys.
"What the hell?" he mutters at some of them.
"Here." Victoria takes one of them, a fish, from him and squeezes it to show him how the eyes pop out of its head.
"That's fucked up!" Gabe gets up and comes back with his phone. "Do that again." He grabs one of the frogs, holds it next to the fish, and snaps a picture. He sends it off, then holds up his phone so she can see his tweet: We're bugging out!
Victoria laughs, and Tyler smiles up at her. "That's right, baby." She kisses his forehead.
Gabe's stomach growls loud enough for Victoria to hear, and he rubs at it. "We going out or eating here?"
Victoria wrinkles her nose. "Here. I don't want to get dressed."
Gabe leans over and kisses her forehead. "Pancakes? Waffles? Eggs?"
"Pancakes," Victoria decides, and Gabe gets up to make them.
*
Victoria spends the whole week convincing Gabe he should go out on New Year's Eve. "I'm probably not even going to stay up until midnight, and I can stay home with Tyler," she says. "You've barely been out since I got pregnant. I'm sure you miss it."
She's on the couch with whatever early evening coverage from around the world is on TV when Gabe leaves. He's dressed in a suit with a matching fedora. Victoria wolf-whistles, and he does a catwalk turn in the middle of the living room.
"Looking sharp."
"Thanks." Gabe grins at her. "I wasn't sure I remembered how." He comes over and kisses her cheek.
Victoria reaches up and wraps her arms around his shoulders for a hug. "Happy New Year."
"You too." Gabe steps back and grins at her. "See you next year."
Victoria mostly doesn't mind when he leaves and she's alone. It's not bad, exactly, even if it's not at all how she thought she'd be spending New Year's Eve a year ago. Tyler's here, and sleeping, thank God. She misses going out, though, and she's starting to think she's at the point where if she can get Tyler to take a bottle, she could leave him with someone else and go out for an evening. She hasn't been to a club since the end of the last tour, and by then she was so heavily pregnant it wasn't that fun.
She's depressing herself thinking about it, so she turns off the TV, checks on Tyler, and goes to bed instead. Uninterrupted sleep time is a precious commodity, and she'll take what she can get, even on New Year's Eve.
Tyler wakes her up a little before three, and she stumbles across the hall from her room to his.
"Hi, baby," she says as she lifts him out of his crib. "Happy New Year." She sits in the rocking chair and pulls her pajama top up so he can nurse. This is easy and familiar now, and she closes her eyes as she rocks.
She hears the front door open and close just before Tyler decides he's done. Victoria pulls her pajama top back down and shifts him in her arms so it's more comfortable. Gabe stops at the door and leans in the doorway. He looks like a fashion spread, his hat askew, his tie loosened, his eyes hazy.
"Hi," he whispers, a little loud. Victoria figures he's drunk, but comfortably so, not wasted.
"Hi," she whispers back.
Gabe stays in the doorway, just watching her and Tyler. It doesn't take long for Tyler to fall asleep. Victoria puts him back in his crib. Gabe rolls around the doorjamb into the hallway. Victoria pulls the door mostly shut behind them.
"Happy New Year."
Gabe smiles down at her. "Happy New Year."
Victoria hides a yawn behind her hand. "Did you have fun?"
"Yeah." Gabe's still smiling at her. He cups his hands over her shoulders. "I missed you, though." He leans down and kisses her.
He's kissed her before, but mostly for show. There's no one watching them here, not even Tyler. It's just the two of them in a darkened hallway.
It's been a long time since anyone kissed Victoria. It feels so good she almost wants to cry.
When he stops, her eyes are closed and her hands are on his sides, between his shirt and his coat.
"Happy New Year," Gabe says again.
Victoria huffs out a laugh. "Happy New Year," she says, even though she's thinking, What the hell was that?
Gabe lets go of her to go to his own room. "Oh, by the way," he says just before he gets to his door, "I invited Mikey over to see Tyler."
"Okay." Victoria watches him flash a smile, and then close his door. What the hell was that? she thinks again before she forces herself to go back to bed. Tyler will be up again in a couple of hours.
*
Victoria gets up with Tyler early in the morning; Gabe sleeps in.
"How hungover are you?" she asks when he comes out of his room looking for coffee.
"Not very." Gabe sounds surprised. "There might be something to this drinking in moderation thing."
He doesn't say anything about kissing her, and neither does she. They just fall back into their normal routine, and it becomes one of those things where Victoria wonders if it ever really happened. Only sometimes, when she's up with Tyler in the middle of the night, does she think about it, what it was like to have Gabe's lips against hers, Gabe's body warm under her hands.
*
Mikey comes over a couple of days after New Year's, which is fine with Victoria. He also brings Alicia, Gerard, Lyn-Z, and Bandit with him, which she's not quite as okay with. She would have liked a little notice before having a house full of people.
Gabe throws her an apologetic look, and she shrugs back at him. There's nothing to be done about it now. She lets Gabe take Tyler and introduce him to everyone while she goes to the kitchen to get drinks.
She comes back to Mikey holding Tyler. Mikey would not be her first choice for a responsible person to hold a baby, but he's supporting Tyler's head and holding him carefully, and she supposes he had to have held Bandit when she was little.
"He's a baby all right," Mikey says, flat and monotone.
Gabe snorts. "Good to see living in Jersey hasn't ruined your powers of observation."
Mikey flashes Gabe a grin almost too quick to be seen.
Alicia links her arm around Mikey's and leans against his shoulder to look at Tyler, then looks up at Victoria. "He looks like you." She reaches out and brushes her finger against Tyler's chin. "Cute."
"Thanks." Victoria settles into one of the armchairs, and Gabe comes over to sit on the arm of it.
"Wanna see!" Bandit clambers over from her dad's lap into Alicia's and reaches her arms out toward Tyler.
Alicia loops her arm around Bandit's waist to keep her from climbing onto Tyler.
"Bandit," Lyn-Z says, "why don't you give Victoria the present we brought for Tyler?"
It's an effective distraction. Bandit climbs down from the couch and goes over to her mom. Lyn-Z gives her a bag almost as big as she is that Bandit drags over to Victoria.
"Thank you, Bandit," Victoria says.
Bandit's suddenly shy; she scurries back over to her mom. Lyn-Z picks her up and settles her onto her lap.
Victoria pulls the tissue paper out of the bag to get to the present. Presents. There's a baby-sized hoodie with bunny ears, another one that's fuzzy and has bear ears. Below the hoodies are a full Batman costume and one that she's pretty sure is supposed to be a cobra. Gabe takes each thing from her after she looks at it.
Victoria's smiling when she says, "Thank you," after she pulls the last one out of the bag.
"These are awesome." When Victoria looks up, Gabe's grinning at the collective members of the Way family. "I can't wait to put him in the cobra."
*
Victoria's too tired to make a big deal out of her birthday. She takes a seemingly never-ending series of calls wishing her a happy birthday, and she and Gabe have a quiet dinner at home.
A week later, Nate flies out to visit, and they have him, Alex and Lauren, and Ryland and Meredith over for dinner. It's part belated birthday celebration and part band reconnection.
"So," Nate asks when they're lingering at the table over wine and the last bits of cake, "are we going to talk about touring?"
"Here," Lauren says, reaching out, "why don't we take Tyler into the living room and let you all talk."
Gabe kisses Tyler's forehead and stands up to hand him over to her. Alex and Ryland scoot down the table so the five of them are at the same end. While Gabe's up, he gets a folder off of the kitchen counter. "We've been running some numbers." He passes out sheets of paper to each of them.
Victoria looks at him instead of at the piece of paper. She didn't know he was doing that.
"It'll cost us some money, but we can swing two buses." Gabe doesn't look at Victoria as he says it. "The three of you on one bus, the three of us on the other."
"Gabe," Victoria says sharply. He finally looks at her. "No. That's- You don't have to do that. You can be on the party bus. I can handle Tyler."
Gabe turns fully in his chair so his knees press against her thigh. "Babe," he says, completely serious, "I want to do this. I want to be here until you meet a guy you want to be in your life and be Tyler's dad."
The only guy Victoria wants in her life, the only guy she wants to be Tyler's dad, is Gabe. The knowledge slams into her, and it's enough of a shock that she doesn't even argue. "Okay."
Gabe grins, sudden and bright, and ducks in to kiss her cheek. "And we'll be a place of refuge for anyone who desperately needs some quiet time."
"What are you doing with Tyler for shows and soundcheck?" Ryland asks.
Gabe glances at Victoria. "We haven't talked about that yet."
Victoria's arms feel empty without Tyler. "Think we can convince security that watching Tyler is part of their job?"
Gabe smirks. "Or maybe the guys from Sawdust Werewolves. Doesn't one of them have like seven brothers and sisters?"
"I think he's the oldest, too," Alex puts in. They haven't spent a lot of time with Sawdust Werewolves yet, but they seem like good kids, if young.
"If we can do it with tour staff," Victoria says, "I'd rather not hire a nanny." There's something about the idea of a nanny that feels too much like sharing Tyler.
Gabe makes notes on a piece of paper. "I'll see what we can do." He frowns and makes another note. "And get them to do more thorough background checks on anyone who hasn't been out with us before."
Nate and Alex exchange looks across the table, and then they're laughing, and so are Ryland and Victoria, and even Gabe smiles sheepishly.
"Yeah, yeah," he says, "I'm the last person you ever expected to say that." He reaches out and squeezes Victoria's knee. "But I'm not letting anyone who might hurt him get anywhere close to Tyler."
Victoria stops laughing and has to draw in a deep breath to keep from reacting to Gabe's touch any more than that.
*
Victoria doesn't know what to do with this new knowledge, so she doesn't do anything. She shoves it down and focuses on Tyler, on pulling out her keytar and practicing, on being just the same as always. The same as always means curling up with Gabe on the couch in the evenings, waking up over coffee with Gabe in the mornings, and listening to Gabe speak Spanish to Tyler.
Gabe still sings the lullaby, "Papi's gonna buy you a mockingbird."
The first time Victoria says, "You want to go to Papi?" as she hands Tyler to Gabe, Gabe freezes in the act of reaching for him. Victoria resists the urge to explain herself and stubbornly wills herself not to blush.
Gabe takes Tyler after a moment and keeps his eyes on Victoria as he says, "Ven, mijo."
Victoria laughs, later, when she's rocking Tyler. "Maybe Amber was right, huh, baby?" Victoria sure wants her to have been. She wants this to be real, wants them to be like that. She wants Gabe.
She strokes the soft fuzz of Tyler's hair and tells herself to let it go. Gabe's never seen her like that, New Year's Eve kiss not withstanding.
*
Victoria picks a fight with Gabe two days before Valentine's Day. They're working on getting Tyler to take a bottle so they'll be a little more flexible on tour. Gabe tests it against the inside of his wrist, but it's still too hot for Tyler, and he pulls away from it and starts crying.
Victoria snatches Tyler from Gabe and cradles him close. "It's okay, baby. Mommy's got you." She keeps murmuring soothing nonsense as she takes him down the hall to his room. She settles into the rocking chair and opens her shirt. Tyler's crying cuts off as he starts to nurse.
"That's it, baby," Victoria murmurs.
Tyler falls asleep afterwards. Victoria goes out to find Gabe in the kitchen.
"Shit, babe," he says, "I thought it was fine."
"It wasn't." It's just a mistake, part of her knows that. But part of her, the part that wants Gabe to be there forever but knows he won't, isn't willing to let it go. "You hurt him."
"Fuck," Gabe says, "I know. I'm sorry."
Every bit of frustration Victoria's been feeling, about spending the last four months in the apartment with just Gabe and Tyler, about all the ways her life has changed, about everything she can't have, boils over. "No," she hisses. "No. You don't get to be sorry."
Gabe clearly wasn't expecting that. His eyes widen and his mouth opens.
"He's my son," Victoria says before he can speak. "Mine." Her voice gets louder with every word. "I don't need you doing anything with him."
And maybe Gabe is feeling some of the same frustration she is, because his face twists into a scowl. "Like hell you don't!" He shouts back at her. "You'd be crammed into a tiny apartment with no fucking idea what to do if it weren't for me."
"Fuck you! I can do this myself."
"Fine," Gabe says, every line of his body tight and stiff. "Fine. Then see how you like it." He yanks his coat off the hook and slams the front door shut behind him.
Victoria stares after him, breath heaving, for a couple of minutes before she starts to cry.
Gabe doesn't come home that night.
Tyler's fretful all evening and into the next morning.
Victoria lasts until ten-thirty. Then she bundles Tyler up, straps him into his car seat, slings the diaper bag over her shoulder, and calls for a cab. She knows Ryland and Meredith went out of town for Valentine's Day, so she gives the driver Alex and Lauren's address, betting on Gabe staying in the city and not going out to Jersey.
She figures she's right when Alex opens the door in his bathrobe with a serious look on his face and dark circles under his eyes.
"Are you going to yell at him again?"
Victoria swallows past the lump in her throat. "No."
Alex opens the door wide enough for her to come in. "He's in the kitchen. Hungover as all fuck."
Victoria sets Tyler's car seat down on the floor and takes him out of it. This is going to be easier with Tyler in her arms.
Gabe looks hungover as all fuck. He's smiled every other time he's looked at Tyler, but not this time. He has dark circles under his eyes, and he looks older than Victoria's ever seen him look. They stare at each other for what seems like a long time, Victoria in the doorway and Gabe at the table with a cup of coffee clasped between his hands.
"Come home," Victoria finally says.
Gabe shakes his head. "Victoria-"
Victoria wants to cry again. "No," she says, talking over him. "No, Gabe, please." She comes into the room and stands next to Gabe so Tyler's right at his eye level. "Please. I do need you. We need you."
Gabe puts his hand on her arm, and that's good, right? That he's touching her?
"Victoria, you can't-" He shakes his head again. "I love Tyler. Yesterday- It broke my heart to hurt him, and then you-"
Victoria blinks back tears. "I know," she whispers. "I'm so- God, Gabe, I'm so sorry."
Gabe leans forward and rests his forehead against her arm where it cradles Tyler.
Victoria puts her other hand on the back of Gabe's head, curving around the shape of his skull. "Please, come home."
Gabe nods against her arm. "Okay," he says. "Okay."
Victoria curls over enough to kiss the top of his head, then carefully shifts Tyler from her arms to Gabe's.
"Ai, mijo," he murmurs as he brings Tyler in toward his chest. He smiles at Tyler, and Tyler smiles and gurgles up at him.
Victoria's hands shake, and she grabs at one of the other chairs so she can sit down.
*
They're careful with each other after that, both of them a little on edge and working hard at it. There are only a couple of weeks until tour, and Victoria leaves Tyler at home with Gabe while she goes to the gym almost every day, both as a practice in leaving him with someone else and as a way to show Gabe how much she trusts him with Tyler.
She's still a little bigger than she was before she got pregnant - and her breasts are definitely bigger - which means she needs a whole new tour wardrobe. Diego comes into the city on a Friday and stays with Tyler while Gabe and Victoria go shopping and get lunch.
Victoria finds it hard to concentrate on clothes. The fourth time she checks her phone to make sure Diego hasn't called, Gabe closes his hand over hers.
"They're going to be fine."
Victoria makes a face at him. "I know. That doesn't mean I like it."
Gabe hugs her close. She looks at their reflections in the mirror and decides to buy the dress she has on. It makes her breasts look amazing, and it looks good next to Gabe.
She buys a new wardrobe in a little under three hours, which is pretty much a record.
"Even I couldn't buy that much in that short a time," Gabe says.
"It's because I shop the same places all the time," Victoria tells him. "They know me, and they know what I like." She looks him up and down. "And my look is a little easier than the layers that go into your hobosexual thing."
Gabe leers back at her. "Aw, baby, you know you want this."
Victoria's breath hitches, because she does, and she laughs to cover it up. "You're buying lunch."
Part 4
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-27 04:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-27 05:31 pm (UTC)